My initial guess was that refined sugar has to be the same no matter its provenance, but now I wonder if cane sugar has a different ratio of sucrose/glucose/fructose than beet sugar. Is there any reason why packages of refined sugar advertise 100% cane sugar?

I usually buy beet sugar because there are a fair bit of sugar beet farms in my state, so all things equal, might as well buy local (-ish...may well be imported from half way across the country, who knows.)
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Nick TMar 8 '11 at 2:07

In Britain, beet is produced locally and cane is not. So you'd choose beet for reasons of patriotism, or concern for food-miles, etc.
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slimMar 9 '11 at 16:18

4 Answers
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White beet sugar and white cane sugar are virtually identical in composition, but there may be very small differences (~0.05%) which some cooks find affects carmelization. Reportedly, cane sugar will carmelize better than beet sugar in many cases.

The bigger difference is when you look at brown sugars. In beet sugar, molasses is added after refining to make the brown sugar, as the molasses that comes from beet sugar is not fit for human consumption. Cane sugar is simply a less-refined product where the molasses has been left in the product. So when baking with beet brown sugar, often the molasses hasn't fully penetrated the sugar granules and "rubs off".

They are both mostly sucrose, and they are very similar. But like anything else, there are many differences depending on your point of view. If you come from some parts of Europe you will be very familiar with it

The three main sugars of the world are beet, cane, and corn - depending on where you live. Corn is significantly different from beet and cane. See High fructose corn syrup for more sugar differences

I've noticed a difference in making up meringue for my pies using beet sugar vs. the cane sugar. Seems harder to both get those stiff peak and brown the meringue afterwards using beet granulated sugar than it is using granulated cane sugar.

Either way, I've done enough research now on this cane vs. beet and have come to the conclusion that I prefer cane sugar, and that if the package does not say cane, it is probably beet sugar.